Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
It’s much the same here in Chicago, with a little twist–here we get things but pretend we’re not paying for them. We pay for things we really need, like schools, parks, police, fire, garbage collection, and snow removal. But on top of that, we also pay for the things Mayor Daley wants, like 7,500 condos or rental units on the south lakefront, a big underground hole at Block 37, and a Streeterville headquarters for the Park District. My god, how can we possibly exist without these essentials?
To pay for all of this, Mayor Daley sells off an airport, parking garages, and parking meters; tows cars; jacks up water and sewer fees; and collects property taxes. Sometimes he raises property taxes without telling us he’s raising them. That would be our much-vaunted Tax Increment Financing program in which hundreds of millions of dollars are diverted from the parks, schools, and county, then kept off our tax bills and pretty much off the books.
